Jennifer Cairns moved to Northern Ireland 24 years ago. She's raised both her kids there and says it's way cheaper than raising kids in the US.
Courtesy of Jennifer Cairns
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jennifer Cairns. It has been edited for length and clarity.
When I moved to Northern Ireland from Ohio to marry my husband 24 years ago, I hadn't expected that raising children here would be as different as it has been.
Now that my kids are 18 and 14 years old, I can see some very obvious differences between the US and Ireland when it comes to raising children.
It is a lot more expensive to raise kids in the US than it is in Northern Ireland.
In the US, you have to pay for everything health-related. The insurance cost is high, and then you have co-pays and deductibles, and it doesn't cover everything anyway.
Here, my kids are seen by doctors when they need it, at no cost to our family. Dental and eye care are free.
The trade-off is that we often have long lines waiting for certain things, and we may not get appointments as quickly as we should.
I have a son who is neurodivergent and has had a one-to-one classroom assistant with him since he started school. If we were in the US, we'd have to apply for that, and maybe we would get it, or maybe we wouldn't. Every state and city is so different in what they offer. Some of his support might have been funded, others we would have to fund out of pocket.
Here, the attitude is: this is what my child has a right to. So why isn't my child getting the support they need? Why are they not getting what they deserve?
In the US, it is primarily private schools that require students to wear uniforms. In Northern Ireland, nearly every school has a uniform policy.
Even though uniforms may take away a form of self-expression, they are way easier for parents to manage from a laundry perspective. They can be expensive, but when you compare it to all the things you'd have to buy if they didn't have uniforms, it works out costing less.
Requiring uniforms also reduces status within schools because all children are effectively wearing the same things.
Before a child leaves primary school here in Ireland, they have to take an exam that determines what kind of high school they will attend. They will either go to grammar school, which is a bit more academically driven, or secondary school. To get into a grammar school, the child has to get an A on the exam. It often means children are separated from their friends based on the exam grade. It's a huge amount of pressure and children often spend a lot of time during their last year of primary school studying.
When a child is around 14, they start to choose subjects that will go on to inform their future education opportunities. At 16, children who wish to go to university choose between three and five A-levels to study for their remaining years in school. What you choose for A-levels and the grades you get doing them will determine what you can apply for at university.
This is a lot of pressure for kids very early on. Testing, having to prove themselves, and having to make these life-defining decisions at such a young age is a negative.
High school graduates in America might not decide until their first year of university what they want to do for work. Kids in Northern Ireland are thinking about it from the age of 14.
My oldest son is getting ready to go to university at one of the most prestigious universities for engineering in Northern Ireland. We are most likely only going to end up paying a few thousand dollars toward his education, books, and living costs because the government pays a huge portion of it.
There are also student loans students can take out that they can pay back in very small amounts, only once they are earning a certain amount of money.
The cost of university in America is extortionate.
